I’ve had a few odd experiences with non-functioning sidecars (when posting RAW play ART sidecars on this forum). As best as I can tell, it has to do with there being multiple sidecars generated.
The non-functioning ones tend to be smaller, about half the size of the sidecars (associated with the same RAW file name) that actually work to produce my final edits.
QUESTION: Can light be shed upon why there are multiple sidecars being generated as seen in the ~/.cache/ART/profiles directory? This might explain the behavior I’m seeing.
UPDATE: From poking around, I’ve discerned that for each “snapshot” I create, the sidecar file size increases by roughly 1x the base size. E.g., a 12kb unedited image sidecar will grow to about 24kb upon saving a single snapshot, to about 36kb when saving a second snapshot, etc.
Since the odd behavior I experienced with double sidecar files involved one of about 12kb and another about twice that, I’m guessing the reason the smaller one didn’t have any of the edits was because it hadn’t captured anything that was reflected in my snapshot edits. Why that was the case, and why there were two distinctly different sidecars in the .cache directory (yet a non-edited sidecar in the directory with the RAW image) remains unclear to me.
The creation of a snapshot shouldn’t affect whether the edits are otherwise saved in the sidecar upon exiting (or creating a jpg).
Hi,
Thanks for the report. Can you describe exactly what you are doing, and perhaps also share your options file? I first need to be able to reproduce the bug before I can (try to) understand what is going wrong…
@agriggio I’ve tried to replicate the issue by following what I recall are the same steps that led to having double sidecars with different content, including one that would not upload with the name showing up in my file browser (Dolphin on Manjaro) but so far I have been unable to recreate the issue.
So to simply describe what I’ve been doing, it’s nothing that strikes me as different from what I’ve consistently been doing:
Open a RAW image within ART (currently 1.16.3, but had been 1.16.2 previously)
Perform a series of various edits within ART (typically B&W conversion, followed by various combinations of global edits and local edits)
Typically saving at least one final version as a snapshot before exiting or exporting to jpg
Uploading either my own RAW, jpg, .art sidecar to the forum OR
If not my original RAW, just uploading my jpg and matching .art sidecar file
In one instance, no matter how many times I uploaded the matching sidecar, a different .art sidecar named file would appear in the forum post. In that case, it was not my original RAW I’d been working on. @Phil_Smith has alerted me to this.
In another instance involving my own original RAW file, the name of the sidecar appeared properly, but it turned out it had no edits in it. Again, @Phil_Smith spotted this upon his trying to load the .art sidecar and getting no edits.
Only upon digging into the .cache folder did I spot two matching sidecar files for that RAW name (plus a series of seemingly random alphanumeric unique markers included within the name of each, of course).
One sidecar was half size of the other. The larger one had my edits . But the smaller sidecar in the 'cache matched the size of the one next to the RAW file, and neither had any edits whatsoever.
Sorry I can’t find the smoking gun through replication. Hopefully some of this procedural stuff is informative. If not, I’ll just remain on the lookout for another occurrence - if ever - and try to share the circumstances as best as possible.
As you’ve requested, here’s my options file : options.txt (6.7 KB)
(Note: I had to append “.txt” solely for the purpose of allowing the forum to let me upload it, otherwise it’s the same as the “options” file in .config/ART/profiles)
Ok. Let me know if you find a reliable way to reproduce. Btw, what is in the cache should be considered private and not user-accessible. If you don’t want sidecars but still want to share the processing parameters, you should explicitly save an arp from the editor, instead of looking in the cache. How the cache works is unspecified and might change without notice (and to be honest I don’t quite remember how that works myself, I inherited it from RT and don’t use it personally for arp files…
Will do. Now I’m not sure whether I wish for a reoccurrence or not.
I guess that explains those gibberish-like alphanumerics. I’ve always assumed that nothing is “private” in Linux given one’s root rights. It’s how I cause myself the most trouble.
I’m unclear if you have tried using the out.arp files that are optionally generated when you export an image. This may give reliable arp files for you to upload.
In preferences: image processing, processing profiles for output images, set to save in a sidecar file.
When you export, in the folder containing the exported image you will see a IMG_8873.jpg.out.arp type file.
Interesting idea. I have that option set on my desktop ART installation but not on my laptop installation to cut down on file clutter. I’ve had the processing embedded in the meta-data of the jpg output.
BTW, embedding in the jpg itself (meta data) has worked perfectly to restore the settings to the RAW image when imported as a file source of processing info. I then can create a new .arp file associated with the RAW (not necessarily the jpg output) once reloaded.
Not sure it would make a difference to have it set as a xxx.jpg.out.arp, but will have a look.
